My friend Jeanne and I went to Rawlicious last night. I had been looking forward to eating there for a while and finally found a friend who is adventurous enough to go with me.
When you tell people about raw foods, they usually have no idea what you’re talking about. I told Mark that I had lasagna and he said “Was it crunchy?” …thinking that the noodles would have still been hard (not cooked) and therefore crunchy. Hilarious!
Raw lasagna is like eating a very organized salad. It has tomatoes, nuts (made into nut cheese), pesto and zucchini among other things. It was actually very delicious. I ate the whole thing as if it were normal lasagna and was full afterward.
Jeanne had, what I call, a liquid salad. It was a green juice made with kale, spinach, celery, cucumber and romaine lettuce. I had a sip and it was something I could get used to. She says she’s been “juicing” a lot lately and it’s help her oncoming cold to keeps itself at the point of a small sniffle and only lasted two days.
Raw Food and Enzymes
Raw foods are full of enzymes which are needed for good digestion. They are like little workers inside our foods that our help break down the food particles so that they can be used for energy. A lack of digestive enzymes can be a factor in allergies to foods. Some of the symptoms of this are bloating, belching, gas, bowel disorders, abdominal cramping, heartburn and food allergies.
When we eat cooked food our bodies go through a process called “digestive leukocytosis”. Which simply means it reacts as if there is a foreign organism in the body. Studies show that when food are not refined or overheated, this reaction doesn’t happen. The same foods, if heated, cause a negative reaction in the blood, the same kind of reaction that happens when our bodies are invaded by trauma.
As we grow older our bodies ability to produce digestive enzymes weakens. If this is the case or if a lack of digestive enzymes are a factor, supplementation can helpful.
